


Hidden and New

by Avorna



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 11:16:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14567865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avorna/pseuds/Avorna
Summary: Fighting a horde illithid is well above their job description.In the midst of battle, Caleb is caught by a desperate illithid and it decides to play with his more well kept memories.





	Hidden and New

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory Nott is an adult in this as a preface.

Fighting a horde illithid is well above their job description. It’s not worth the money, and they are supposed to be focusing on gathering information on the Xhorhasian conflict. Honestly, Caleb would rather go back, but Molly’s saying something about saving everyone and how it’s the right thing to do, like some fairytale hero trying to rouse the troops. So they’re carrying on.

Though for all intents and purposes, they’re down a Fjord, as the warlock hides at the back with him occasionally casting a spell but not getting into the thick of it. He’s too nervous to get closer. Something about the mind flayers’ psionic power has him terrified. There are so many conversations Caleb wants to have about why that is when this is over.

With the help of her rage, Yasha cooly shakes off most of their attempts to infiltrate her mind. As does Beau, until they’re down to the final creature, and it’s looking worse for wear. When the creature tries to bring Molly’s nightmares to the front of his mind, the tiefling smiles and shrugs it off without much concern. The man’s crawled up from his own grave; there are horrors there, but nothing that belongs to this Mollymauk that he doesn’t wear on his sleeve alongside his lying bullshit.

Nott seems okay as she’s been stealthing around it, hiding as much as she can.

The last illithid is rough now, and it looks like it’s panicking. It whips its head around before meeting Caleb’s eyes and there’s a feeling of connection.

Then the searing pain in his mind is all he can think about. The illithid has a grasp on his brain and he can't quite throw it off, and it has command of his head. He can feel it flipping through his every thought like Caleb flips through pages to skim through to the good parts.

"Oh my, you have a rather interesting past with fire, don’t you?" Caleb grits his teeth, he's already in so much mental pain—he can't see anymore with his agony so unbearable—the memories are an unwelcome addition to his suffering.

Vaguely in the background, he can hear Jester shouting his name, urging him back. He can hear the sounds of battle carrying on, and he wants nothing more than to shake free from this bastard and let Jester heal whatever the fuck is happening to his brain.

"My, my, you are ashamed of those, aren't you?" Somehow, his muscles manage to tighten further still. The laughter rises as he brings forth some of the worst of his memories. "Oh, should I tell them all what you did?" This is cruel, and he can hear Fjord yelling his name too now, but he's locked in.

All of a sudden, Caleb is there in his memory. Whilst remaining blind, he can sense the warmth in his hands of arcane flames and he can smell the smoke and hear his own screams and he feels the sickness in his stomach and everything is spinning and he can’t stop it he can’t move it’s happening there’s nothing to be done and—

"Should I tell them about this one, or is there one worse? Shall I have a little dig?" The tendrils wrap tighter around his head as it burrows further into his mind. It occurs to him that the illithid’s voice isn’t the telepathic one—it’s the auditory one that everyone can hear.

"Oh, my." Caleb's conscious brain takes a while to catch up to where the illithid has reached. This part of his memory was formed much more recently than the memories of flames, but the drop of Caleb’s stomach in comprehension of where the illitihid is and what it’s reached is as visceral as the burning.

"You want to fuck the goblin?” the echoing voice snarks. There are several beats of stunned silence around him; he can’t even hear the battle anymore. “The shame coming off these memories is delicious, Caleb Widogast."

Fjord and Jester have stopped screaming his name.

The laughter is so darkly delighted as it digs further. "You're in love with her? You love her? You actually love her?" Its tone is full of wicked faux disbelief as it keeps repeating.

The pain is dug somehow deeper, and Caleb can't scream. He can't move. But he can think somehow. And he knows that he’s about to die. Nott is somewhere in this room, and she can hear him. They all can hear him. This is the last thing they’re ever going to know about Caleb before he dies. He guesses it should be better than them knowing about the blood on his hands, but it hurts all the same.

There's a sudden moment of release as his vision comes back as the mind flayer falls from its grip, and he sees Yasha holding her greatsword aloft.

"It's okay, Caleb," her quiet voice murmurs. It's the most words he's seen the barbarian string together in one of her rages. Slowly, the room spins and his vision slips again as he sees Yasha's pale arms reach out and grab him.

He doesn't dream. It's black.

***

His consciousness returns in fits and spurts. He's vaguely aware of swaying, and it takes a moment to realise he's being carried somewhere. "Do you have any idea of the way out? Jester can't treat him here." Beau's voice sounds far away, distorted by crystal blue water. Then he falls back down.

***

He can't hear this time, but he opens his eyes and is startled by the brightness. Around the dazzling white, there's a shock of colour. Beautiful violets and rich reds and golds. As the image focuses, he recognises it as Mollymauk covered in more blood than he's ever seen in him. The tiefling must have caught his open eyes because Caleb can see him trying to mouth something to him and looking up to call someone else over. He falls unconscious again.

***

When he finally awakens, he's in a weirdly luxurious tavern room for their usual budget. He's aware now that his head hurts worse than the most debilitating hangovers of his youth. He hears himself make a whimpering noise, but he's too weak to care.

In a moment, he can see Jester leaning over his side with Fjord next her. She seems to be inspecting him as she talks; "There you go. You're coming around now. Try not to move your head too much—that's gonna hurt for a while."

"What happened?" is all the wizard can think to ask.

"A mind flayer opened your head up real good. Peeled the back of your skull open like it was nothing. It was ripping apart parts of your brain ready to ingest it when Yasha killed it. She carried you out of there, too." Fjord sounds haunted by what he's describing.

Caleb's voice is weak. "Remind me to thank her next time I see her."

Fjord smiles. "You have a lot of people to thank. Jester's fixed you up real good. Honestly, I'm in awe right now."

Jester's voice is singsong and it makes him feel that touch more alive. "I mean I am the bestest.” She pauses before adding, “We did find another cleric, Anneli, to do some of the extra emergency healing stuff cos like I had to use a lot of spells to fix you up. She follows the platinum dragon, though, so her deity is much lamer."

Caleb’s laughter is weak, and Fjord looks back at him. "So, what do you remember about what happened?"

He remembers everything. Every excruciating moment.

"I remember getting up that morning to head to the tunnel."

Fjord and Jester look to each other for a moment. "Okay. Maybe it's best you don't remember?" she offers.

Fjord nods.

Yes, Caleb remembers every second before he thought he was going to die. He remembers the relived memories. He remembers the prying.

"Where is Nott?" Caleb is shocked by how neutral he keeps his voice. Caleb's stomach twists and the familiar twinge in his head starts again. As he winces, Jester rushes forward to check his dressings.

Fjord answers whilst Jester attends to his wounds. "She’s over there." He points to the far side of the room. "She's asleep. It's typical timing, to be honest. She's been awake these past 3 days straight. We did try to tell her to rest, Caleb, I promise." Fjord tries to reassure. "But she wouldn't leave your bedside. Even Jester's taken a break for her sanity and let Anneli look after you so she could sleep. Nott finally conked out an hour and a half ago."

"Okay," Caleb mumbles. “Let her sleep. Am been gonna again-"

He falls into bizarre dreams of bonfires and cracking skulls.

***

When he wakes up next time, Nott is on the chair next to him. She's reading something, but when she catches sight of Caleb, her eyes dart upwards. "You're awake."

"I guess I am." His voice is all whisper and no bass; the richness of his voice bled out in his feebleness. "Are the others around?"

Nott shakes her head. "Would you like me to go get Anneli and one of the others? I think Jester needs to sleep."

"No, it's fine. Just wondering. Are you all okay?"

She shrugs, "We're fine. Molly lost a lot of blood, but he always does. No one else had their brain nearly eaten." There's a shrill fear to her last sentence.

"But it didn't manage it. I'm going to be fine once I'm healed," he tries to reassure.

Nott nods but still looks horrified, "Should be a couple of weeks of this though." She gestures to the sick bed around him. "What— What do you remember?"

Now there’s a question.

He says blankly that he remembers nothing.

Nott pauses before asking again, and Caleb's stomach turns. She won't say he's lying—that's not how they are. But the implication is there, and Caleb doesn't know what he's said any different to Jester and Fjord to make them think he was telling the truth.

"I remember everything. Until I blacked out after Yasha hit it. Then very little." Caleb focuses on the weirdly plush ceiling above them.

"So you remember...?"

"Yes."

The silence is immediate. All Caleb can hear is the soft labouring of Nott's breathing. It stretches out far too long.

"Was it true?"

There's a moment of hesitation where he tries to decide whether it's worth it to even try to lie before he decides better of it. "Yes."

Caleb longs to float away. It seems like a moment ago, he was dying. Now he’s sat here answering questions that he thought he’d leave buried with him. He misses back before this got complicated, before the rest of the Nein and before he figured out his feelings. He misses back when they weren’t fighting everything in their path.

“You’re ashamed,” she says simply. It’s not a question.

There’s nothing that he can think to say to that, just lower his gaze in recognition and refusing to meet her eyes.

“That’s— understandable, I’d say,” her voice is thick and cracking as she tries to hold it together.

Caleb fidgets with the sheets, focusing on the feel of the fabric’s much higher thread count than the usual linen they’re used to. There is nothing that he can say that will make this better.

“Of all the ways I thought about this, I didn’t imagine this as an option,” Nott says bewildered. “I know what I am. I know that it’s…off-putting. I thought that if it was off-putting, it’d stop any of this happening at all. Of course, you wouldn’t want to— But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if you do want? I don’t have the powers to change that—”

Slow realisation trickles in as she speaks, and Caleb goes to sit up to reach over to her. But as he moves, an echo of the familiar searing pain goes through the back of his head and he finds his face twisting in agony. In an instant, Nott’s pushing him back down and looking at his dressings. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have upset you. It’s fine.” She’s lying as she frets; she was never particularly good at lying to Caleb. “I’ll go get Jester.”

He grabs for her wrist and holds it there. “I’m not ashamed because you’re a goblin.” He speaks through gritted teeth as the pain renders his muscles tense. “I don’t care what you are. You could be anything else in the world and I’d feel the same. I don’t care what people think. People are arseholes, and I’m long past trying to please them.

“You never asked for me and my bullshit, but you stayed and I am thankful. You didn’t ask for me to go and take whatever this thing is,” he waves his free hand between the two of them, “and change it. You've never shown any interest, and that's fine. But I don’t have anyone else. I can’t drive you away. And I can’t make you stay either, or I’ll never forgive myself.”

As he finishes speaking, in recognition of his words he drops the hand around her wrist and stares at the ceiling again.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Nott go to speak and the words fall flat before she’s let them out. She pauses, and he can feel her gaze focused on him. But he won’t meet it. She leaning in closer as Caleb wishes he could shrink down and shirk away from this weird inspection he can feel from her.

“I don’t have anyone either.” She pauses again as she collects her thoughts. “You’re not taking anything away if you want to— I want to be with you in the most ways that you’ll let me. I’d have us be anything.”

It is not the reaction Caleb was expecting. Nothing about this is expected.

“You shouldn’t have to force yourself to take something you don’t want from me,” Caleb whispers bitterly.

“I’ll have us be anything because I love you.” She stops for a moment, swallowing. “Like that,” she clarifies. She looks likes she’s about to say something else, but she thinks better of it.

“I— Yes. Well, you know. That also.” Caleb manages eventually in way of reciprocation.

It doesn’t feel like an explosion of relief like it always did in Caleb’s half-formed daydreams of what it’d be like to have Nott say she feels the same. It feels overwhelming in a way that’s all too much. Maybe in a couple of days, with Caleb’s fragile brain a little less breakable and time spent processing what all this is, he’ll be able to speak more eloquently. But at present, it’s moving too fast. Half an hour of his consciousness ago, he was feeling his grey matter being inhaled by an abomination of the Underdark.

“Even if we both, you know? It doesn’t have to change anything,” he offers.

“No, it doesn’t,” Nott replies carefully. “But I’d like it to if that’s what you’re asking.”

And that’s that. “Okay,” Caleb whispers as he looks properly at Nott, feeling his cheeks redden and feeling a new tension sit on his chest. “Okay, then.”

Caleb thought a long time ago that he was going to be somebody. But he’s not. He’s not one of the champions in the stories he read as a child. He’s a fuck-up. He doesn’t have some beautiful and pure-hearted heroine to love—he has a tiny borderline-alcoholic woman, of a race that’s despised for being violent, who somehow he’s formed this connection with that makes all his fuck-ups seem that bit more bearable. They spend their days fighting stupid shit not through some deep drive to set the world right, but because this is how they’ve come to make coin and because that's what their weirdly formed family does.

They’re not befitting of fairytale stories.

Absentmindedly, Caleb’s eyes flit to her mouth and Nott’s shy smile, but she notices. There’s a funny little feeling in his stomach as she leans forward, looking at his mouth now. It’s not going to be the sweet storybook kiss. He can feel how red his freckled cheeks are, and with his injured head, he can’t move up to meet her.

When their lips meet, it’s sweet. It’s not a chaste peck, nor is it tongues and fiery passion—it’s something in between. His lips are dry and cracked, and Gods know how bad his breath probably is at present, but she doesn’t seem to mind. Caleb can tell she’s trying to be delicate with her teeth with her slow pace, and it’s endearing and grounding at the same time.

Nott pulls away slightly, staying in his space. There’s a bumbling newness to it all of which Caleb is acutely aware.

There’s a knock at the door and it opens before Caleb can respond; Molly, Yasha, and Beau are walking in. There are immediate grins from all three at Caleb’s consciousness. Nott pulls away.

“I believe I owe you a thank you, Yasha,” Caleb says, looking up at his friends.

She shrugs awkwardly before nodding. He smiles the way that he only ever smiles to Yasha; the mutual kindred connection they have between them, despite their shocking physical differences. He knows she feels the overwhelmedness the way he does.

“I believe you’re all okay? Or at least, none of you got your heads opened up.”

Molly chuckles, “Yeah, no we saw how that went for you and we wouldn’t want to steal your thunder. I do love drama but you’ve got to be unique. Didn’t think it was fair to copy.”

“We’re real generous like that,” Beau snorts.

“I appreciate that,” Caleb responds. “So, what else has been going on whilst I’ve been out?”

The three go to sit down, but they’re short a chair. Yasha stands stiffly at the back of the room. “Yasha, it’s fine. Nott would you sit on the bed with me so Yasha can sit down?”

Nott gets up from the chair and places herself on the bed, and Caleb’s arm comes to rest around her waist. It’s not their usual point of contact; with his strength as it is, Caleb’s sure that she could push him away if she wanted to if this wasn’t okay.

Molly and Beau’s eyebrows raise in silent recognition of this new development.

Glancing to his side, Caleb sees the tips of Nott’s long ears go red. She doesn’t pull away.

As he settles down into listening to Beau and Molly regale the latest updates on the Xhorhasian conflict, the pair bicker about the more insignificant details. Caleb focuses on the warmth of Nott’s body bleeding into his.

He’s not going to die. He has his ridiculous friends. Although he’s feeble and he had his heart spilled out in front of them all, it is going to be fine.

Nott shifts closer as the others speak, and Caleb smiles.


End file.
